End of the School Year 2024…
We’ve come to the final Participate workshops from a very busy Summer term of 24 workshops and two in- school performances from Darryl J Carrington and Gav Cross, reaching over 1000 children in rural schools. We’re also delighted to have some August workshops lined up for children and young people, with some community youth groups and Highlights’ Promoters at village halls.
Across the last year Participate has worked with fantastic diverse artists bringing Dance, Theatre, Creative Writing and Storytelling, Poetry and Spoken Word, Music in many styles, Puppetry, Animation and Circus workshops to rural schools and community groups; Moving Arts Parts, Georgia Hill, Life and Limb Puppets, Ella Jarman – Pinto, Kate Halsall, Supriya Nagarajan, Touki, Donnelley and South, Kema Sikazwe, Louise Jordan, EXAUDI, Rowan McCabe, Oliver Sykes, Sarah Crutwell, Gav Cross, Robin Webb, Eliot Smith Dance, Meta4Dance, Yvonne Battle – Felton, Virpi Kettu, Darryl J Carrington and Let’s Circus have all delivered over 70 workshops with Highlights, across the academic school year in Cumbria, County Durham and Northumberland.
We’ve worked with 22 artists/companies across the academic year, including touring artists and regionally based artists from our three counties and elsewhere in the North. We’re delighted to have reached students in 9 Secondary schools this school year, supporting Arts activities for GCSE and A Level students, as well as hosting a Young Promoter for her work experience week from Kirkby Stephen Grammar School, this May.
This school year 2023 – 24 we have reached 2955 children and young people with 77 workshops, at 37 rural schools and with 4 community groups, across Cumbria, County Durham and Northumberland.
We’ve also had some fantastic feedback from teachers and students.
“The children were keen to see the writing processes of a real-life author.”
“The editing process and the way a writer gets writing- we keep talking about Yvonne as a an author in our lessons.”
“We’ve just had Georgia Hill working with 3 classes. The feedback from her workshops from staff, children and parents has been amazing. I was really impressed in what the children managed to achieve in such a relatively short space of time.” Head Teacher
“The outcomes for the children were learning about group participation, knowledge building, confidence and communication skills.”
“The children enjoyed the whole session and enjoyed the fact that it was very active and that Kema was very inspiring.”
“Kema was fantastic, thank you so much for organising this for us!”
“I just wanted to say a big thank you for sending Gav along to us again. He really is wonderful with the children.”
“He crammed so much about storytelling into his session this morning.”
“I have learnt practical skills for example using data bases but it has also taught me more about weighting, through my reviews.”
“I feel it has taught me valuable skills and lessons.”
“My work experience has really helped me secure what I thought I wanted to do and make me realise that yes, that is what I want to do.”
“I’ve absolutely loved my time with Highlights and I would 100% recommend it to anyone thinking about their work experience.”
